Grown Up Thinking

An hour-long high school dramedy series that’s a musical? Let’s face it: Glee initially had everything going against it. Time will ultimately tell, but skeptics be damned. This year’s Golden Globe winner for Best Comedy Series turned out to be a runaway hit that has yet to lose steam as it heads into the second part of its freshman season. Above all, the show’s writing is top notch by melding a perfect blend of edgy dark humor and a lot of heart. The talent of the young cast is undeniable. And Jane Lynch turns anything into comic gold. But producers were faced with some tough challenges right from the start. How to get people to actually tune in? Enter social media and a relatively risky gamble on an aggressive interactive marketing campaign.

First of all, Fox chose to debut the pilot episode months before its actual season debut in order to capitalize on its 20+ million captive audience from American Idol. They then utilized the down time to really gain traction online by engaging with their most passionate fans (or ‘Gleeks’). Currently, @gleeks has a nearly 50,000 person following on Twitter and almost 2 million fans on Facebook. Mix that with its very own YouTube channel with exclusive content, PR-worthy appearances (Oprah!) and even nationwide mall performances. Yep, everyone’s all abuzz over the little show that could.

Blurring the line between fan and fiction even further, Glee has since launched a national casting campaign for new characters to appear on the series. Fox also recently released an interactive “hypertrailer” allowing viewers to click and “fan” the show’s cast members on Facebook, who also participate live on-air in weekly re-run episodes (or “Tweetpeats”) much like the cast commentary on today’s DVD and Blu-ray discs.

So what’s so significant about Glee’s marketing strategy, anyway? At its core, it is truly a niche show. But a very enthusiastic niche crowd at that. And Glee is giving that very core audience exactly what they want: access and interaction. At a time when studios are shuttering unauthorized playback of content and guarding creative copyrights like a fortress, this show is practically shooting it across America through a t-shirt cannon. Whether it be the show’s music content (consistently charting week after week on iTunes) or capturing that “underdog” spirit in everyone, Glee has succeeded in truly crossing all media types, including a forthcoming iPhone/iPad app. That makes it one of the very first scripted shows to actually achieve results in reaching out to a young, digital audience with significant viral success. That’s definitely a social media coup to be gleeful about. I, for one, am proud to be a Gleek. Who’s with me?

Glee resumes its season on Tuesday,  April 13 on Fox.

We all know that product placement is nothing new. It’s a multi-billion dollar market that spans across television, movies, music, sports and more. Whether it’s the Coca Cola cups on the American Idol judging table or the food on top of Joey and Chandler’s fridge in Friends, product placement is everywhere all the time. Sometimes it’s subtle and plays in to the storyline of a movie or TV show; other times it’s more obvious. In Lady Gaga’s case, it’s on the screen and in your face, and she doesn’t care if you like it or not.

She’s known for her eccentric outfits and imaginative performances. In fact, being over-the-top is what made Lady Gaga so famous. Now the artist is starting to be noticed for the blatant product placement in her music videos. And with over 50% of brands using branded content for awareness-based marketing, she is a marketer’s dream come true. In fact, Lady Gaga is the only recording artist to reach 1 billion video views across all online video platforms – perhaps making her blatant product placements the most valuable in entertainment history! According to Neilsen AIG, product integration is more likely to drive brand recall than other forms of advertising, so if all goes according to plan, I’ll never make a sandwich without thinking of Lady Gaga, and I’ll never see Lady Gaga without wanting a sandwich.

Maybe when I finish eating I’ll take a picture with my Poloroid camera, upload it on to my Beats laptop, listen to some tunes on my Hearbeats headphones and call my friend on my Virgin Mobile phone. Why? Because Lady Gaga made me do it.

In the fuzzy afterglow of the Chat Roulette frenzy of the past few weeks, I find myself thinking “what’s next”? Lucky for me, I don’t have to spin my wheels on that brain buster quite yet as two similar sites have already distracted me with their unique interpretations of the random chat craze:

RandomDorm connects college students on the prowl for some dorm-to-dorm interaction (only those with a .edu address need apply).
MyChanceRomance Billed as the “fun way to find love”, MyChanceRomance is a dating site with a Hot-Or-Not mentality that’s bound to give you an inferiority complex.

Not ready to move on from the original just yet? Don’t fret. It’s  still alive and well, even spawning it’s own Chat Roulette Missed Connections site (which I can assure you is comic genius in its own right).

Happy Birthday, Twitter! As we reflect on four years of compacting our thoughts into 140 characters, social media pulse point Mashable.com is asking readers how Twitter has changed their lives, by using the hashtag #thankstwitter4. Sifting through the 140 #thankstwitter4 tweets that Mashable chose to highlight got us well-connected folks at Mr Youth thinking about what we’d like to thank Twitter for. Here’s just a smattering of our grateful gospel:

@courtneyc: #thankstwitter4 helping our generation fuel the biggest text-based fundraiser in history via the @RedCross

@laural:  For the information I learn from everyday #thankstwitter4

@kennyh:  #thankstwitter4 forcing me off my butt on #lazysunday by showing me what all my friends are doing

@jennaa:  #thankstwitter4 the most hilarious trending topics – i.e. #myfuturehusband & #dearfuturewife

@ericab:  For celebrating pithier wordsmithery #thankstwitter4

@ericab: (and for @ShitMyDadSays) #thankstwitter4

@alexisd: #thankstwitter4 giving me a place to voice all of those random thoughts that come to me on my commute to and from work

@manisham:  #thankstwitter4 helping me get hundreds of clicks a day on manishainmanhattan.com!

@laural:  For all the new friends and business contacts I have made #thankstwitter4

@giancarlop: #thankstwitter4 making human interactions, thoughts, and feelings searchable. (sorry to get all heavy on you)

From outlandish one-on-one encounters to themed bar nights, ChatRoulette has swept the nation with its unapologetically uncensored take on the classic internet chat. Marketing types around the world held their breath wondering who would be the first brand to tap in to the 500,000+ unique users per day.

And the winner is…. French Connection. The international clothing brand has launched a ChatRoulette competition challenging participants to use the service to seduce a woman in exchange for a $250 voucher. Risky move for an international brand, considering the proliferation of shady stuff going down on the site. But foolish or not, they’ve been getting a lot of coverage for being the first.

Only time will tell if ChatRoulette can become a useful tool in the marketer’s arsenal. Thoughts?

The new Vampire Weekend album, Contra, came out a few weeks ago. As a fan, I did what I always do… I downloaded it illegally. I didn’t even think twice.

Then a curious thing happened. One of my coworkers rushed to the record store to buy the very same album.  Huh? He enthusiastically explained the beauty of having something tangible, described pouring over the inset, the liner notes, the bonus poster that came in the sleeve. Having the album ensures that you listen to the tracks in the order the artist intended, he said, the time and energy involved in tracking down the record made it that much better. It all sounded very transcendental – something Penny Lane would wax poetic about in Almost Famous.

I can’t relate. At 22, I don’t think I’ve ever purchased an album. I got onboard the Napster train early on and haven’t looked back since.

All legal issues aside, is it possible that I’m missing something fundamental by skipping the pomp and fanfare of the record store? By downloading an artist’s tracks individually online, am I reducing the integrity of the music to a 99 cent commodity?

PS. Vampire Weekend, it you’re reading this – I’m very sorry. I owe you 12 dollars.

Words, words, words. Adding value for consumers has always been an awesome thing. But an increasingly large flock of factors have nearly made it mandatory. Evolving a brand’s message and positioning is a sure sign of actively listening and relating to its customer base. And it starts by prioritizing substance over style. So let us weather the storm with a newly refreshed lexicon, shall we?

Source: PRSA

I think we’ve all seen them by now–your friends tag you in pictures of South Park characters, superheros or those colorful cartoon characters you recognize but can’t remember what they’re called. This trend seems to catch on more and more every day with a new iteration hitting Facebook every 12 hours. You look in the picture, and scroll through the image to find out which one you are–the cute one? the fun one? the Arab????

Let’s face it–these photos are fun and harmless, and most generate some spirited discussion in the comments section. Still, one has to admit that this practice is a pretty boldfaced example of stereotyping.  I’m just waiting for the stories to surface of friendships ended or relationships terminated because the tagger didn’t quite think through their choices. I mean does anyone really want to be tagged as the ginger (not that there’s anything wrong with that)? As my mom used to say growing up, it’s all fun and games until someone gets their feelings irrevocably hurt by an internet meme.

I’m always interested in how language is influenced by changes in culture and technology. Trend Central recently published a good, albeit slightly flawed (etymology of pwn is way wrong, real one found here… thanks Matt) list of new slang for 2009.  As this list indicates, two themes are really making an impact on the words we use: the recession & digital media.

It will be interesting to see how the economic downturn continues to shape the ways we communicate and the language we use.  ”Recession menus” are popping up all over New York City, and some are under very dubious disguises.  

One thing is clear: whether we’re talking about relationships or macroeconomic instability, the proliferation of micromessaging tools and platforms will continue to augment language and change standards of acceptability.  I’m still not sure I want to use “do not want!” in my business emails yet, but given what we’re seeing I can’t imagine it will be long before such obscure terms and expressions gain mainstream use.